July carols

(From the story by Petr Yemets. The author’s style is preserved)


My father died before my birth. In his letters from the front, he asked my mother to call me Ivan (for some reason he was sure that he would have a son). But my mother called me Petr, and there is an explanation for this. When I was an adult, rural women told me:

‘We are sitting in the room, and your mother is lying, you’re about to be born in this world. It’s night, suddenly we look out of the window, and it’s so light outside. At first, we thought that someone’s house was on fire, but no, only in the garden it’s light as if in the daytime, and everywhere else it’s dark, and somebody else’s children are playing completely naked.

Then your mother begins to give birth. We took you, put in a cradle, and the children started to shout outside the window ‘Let us sing a carol song!’ What carol song?! It’s July!

And the kids are in the house already, surrounded the cradle. We’re standing near the wall, arms and legs are like wadded, and are watching.

Children are all blond, joined their hands, and are looking at you ‘Mister Petr woke up.’ Where could they hear this word? In our village, no one named anyone “mister”. And your mother’s already called you Ivan.

The children sang a little more, then the light began to disappear, it became completely dark in the house and outside, and the children disappeared somewhere.

And we, eventually, decided to call you Petr, just as the little angels said, because they came, most likely, not in vain...’

This is the story. If one person told me about this, I probably wouldn’t have believed it, but several women who were in the house when I was born confirmed this.

And you know, those angels really came not in vain. They saved my life so many times...’